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Perkins: Pan Ams couldn’t handle competition

On the surface, it makes some sense that Toronto will not participate in the 2015 Women’s World Cup, awarded to Canada this week, even though soccer fans here have arisen in recent years to be a formidable force, both economically and esthetically.

Give or take a few Tasered Chileans, that world teenager tournament held in Canada in 2007, with about a quarter of it in Toronto, was a success and featured record attendance.

In 2015 this city will be centre-court for the Pan Am Games and who knows how long the average sporting attention span will be in four years, or how many sponsorship and ticket-buying dollars will be available for a B-list affair?

The city, through Tourism Toronto, allegedly opted out of a share of the WWC, but there’s another version of the story, one by which the Canadian Soccer Association and Pan Am Games people are at odds because Pan Ams mahatma Ian Troop overplayed his hand by last year by urging federal sports minister Gary Lunn to drop support for the WWC and park the bid. The feds will put at least $15 million into the WWC and weren’t about to pull any plugs in favour of a self-serving request out of Toronto. The CSA’s response upon discovery was, basically, “bleep Toronto,” an answer that always plays well elsewhere in Canada.

After a day of absorbing criticism, Troop announced that TO2015 “is delighted” about the WWC coming to Canada. Sure. That would be in the same way Jesse Eisenberg was “delighted” that Colin Firth won the Oscar.

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It’s clear why Troop didn’t — and doesn’t — want to share. Hardly anyone cares about the Pan Ams, a tough sell as is. The Canadian women’s team’s popularity would represent competition and one more problem he doesn’t need. (He already has plenty.)

Nor will the WWC lose much if anything by not including Toronto. All of Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver have a demonstrated history in selling tickets for this kind of thing and any or all of Ottawa, Winnipeg, Moncton and Halifax could or will have new stadiums to help brighten the show. Toronto isn’t necessary, except for the business about rewarding customers who now support the game where they once didn’t. As colleague Cathal Kelly points out, rather sanely, throwing the Toronto crowd a bone with a start-up game, two-three weeks out from the Pan Ams, surely couldn’t harm the latter event.

Two questions arise here. One, what happens to the Pan Am soccer tournament? Could it be used as an under-23 qualifier for the 2016 Olympics, or will bad blood preclude any chance? (The more sports that use the Pan Ams as an Olympic qualifier, the better the level of athlete that will attend. That should be obvious to everyone.)

The other: If Toronto isn’t going to participate in a FIFA event like the WWC, just why, exactly, did we taxpayers lay out $62 million for what is occasionally called the “National Soccer Stadium” on the CNE grounds?

Remember how the justification for a soccer-specific stadium was that it would become the home of big-time national-team events? Yes, the teenagers were here four years ago but a bigger FIFA fiesta, the WWC, now won’t be. Plus, even the Pan Am soccer tournament will play its bigger games at Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton, where another $152 million (at least) will be laid out to benefit the Tiger-Cats.

Apparently BMO Field — better to call it Scheme-O Field — will continue along as a cash cow for the civic-minded Samaritans at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, who have done nothing but make money on the taxpayer-provided facility since even before it opened. What a shock.

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